Multiple types of thin film materials are used in the semiconductor and hard disk drive industries for a variety of purposes. The characterization of a thin film's structural properties or integrity is a necessary part of the industrial manufacture of semiconductor and hard disk drive devices. However, the characterization of thin film structural properties or integrity, particularly for certain types of thin films such as metallic films, is often challenging and frequently destructive in nature. For instance, in most industrial applications, the determination of thicknesses of ferromagnetic samples is a destructive process. Either a four-point probe is used for probing the electrical resistivity of the sample, and sample thickness is calculated from sample resistivity, or the sample is physically cleaved, and a cross-sectional image obtained, from which sample thickness is gauged. Materials characterization techniques involving destructive testing are undesirably inefficient from a materials preparation or usage standpoint, and correspondingly such techniques are expensive and/or time consuming.
Additionally, most techniques utilized for the metrology of thin films, such as ellipsometry or four-probe measurements, are generally applicable only to the measurement of continuous films. For patterned films, such as patterned structures or devices encountered in the semiconductor or hard disk drive industries, destructive testing techniques such as transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) are used. Furthermore, any given existing thin film metrology technique is generally quite limited with respect to the types of measurements that can be performed, and hence are undesirably limited with respect to the types of thin film characterization information they can provide.
In view of the foregoing, existing thin film characterization techniques are undesirably destructive; undesirably limited with respect to the types of material compositions or structures that can be successfully characterized; undesirably limited with respect to the types of material or structural properties that can be measured; and/or undesirably expensive or time consuming. A need exists for a metrology, measurement, or characterization technique and corresponding material, structure, component, and/or device testing tools that overcome one or more of such limitations.